...It appears that some folk believe that simply because a friend or family member of the crew might be reading this or any other forum it somehow follows we should hold our thoughts out of respect for the family.

Sorry but I call BS. (Personal speak here, not Mod speak).

Something happens that concerns us all, and a boat going down with possibly all hands does concern each and every one of us yet for some reason we are not allowed to discuss it ? Bizarre...

OK, time for me to call BS on your statement. I have yet to see anyone give any reason why we should not discuss this. I'm interested in seeing people's speculation about what happened. Occasionally I might even see some facts. But even the speculation is educational - it's just not factual.

__________________
-"Honestly, I don't know why seamen persist in getting wrecked in some of the outlandish places they do, when they can do it in a nice place like Fiji." -- John Caldwell, "Desperate Voyage"

OK, time for me to call BS on your statement. I have yet to see anyone give any reason why we should not discuss this. I'm interested in seeing people's speculation about what happened. Occasionally I might even see some facts. But even the speculation is educational - it's just not factual.

Eh ? Seems to me that we are in agreement. I'm not too sure how we are at odds.

In case my meaning was unclear .... I was commenting on what I saw as unjustified attempts to throttle the discussion on the grounds that it might upset family and friends.

Presuming that it does not include claims that the skipper was fornicating with the ship's cat I see nothing wrong with speculation as to the possible cause(s) of the presumed loss of the Nina.

Hull failure: As is the Edmund Fitzgerald wasn't the first or last ship to go down from that? This is a documented failure mode, after all.

Fornication with the ship's cat: Brings to mind that wreck vaguely in the UK about fiv eyears ago, where someone had bought a brand new pricey yacht and ran it aground on the maiden voyage, while offwatch with his, ah, beloved, leaving the yacht to find it's own way onto the rocks.

Now, tdw, is your reservation about the fact that it was the ship's CAT, as opposed to other livestock? Or that a carnal act outside of the sanctity of marriage might be involved?

"Senator, why did you beat your wife last night?"
I did not beat my wife, I have never struck my wife.
"Then who was that woman you were beating last night?"

Ricky and Robin Wright of Lousiana, the parents of Danielle Wright, 19, who has been missing for nearly two months after setting sail from Opua, New Zealand, for Newcastle, Australia, with six others aboard the 70-ft staysail schooner Niña, haven't given up hope that their daughter and the others can be still be found alive. They and others have hired Equusearch, a Texas firm, to try to figure out where the schooner and/or her survivors might be now.

In addition, family and friends of the Niña crew are pressing for the U.S. government to have the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), a part of the Defense Department that supposedly has the capability of working out exactly where Niña's satphone calls were made from, to try to help find the survivors. The NGA was instrumental in locating Osama bin Laden. On the other hand, the NGA doesn't have the best record on the water. It was the NGA that provided the erroneous digital maps that contributed to the nearly new 224-ft U.S. Navy vessel Guardian going up on Tubbataha Reef, a World Heritage Site in the Sulu Sea, on January 17 of this year. The NGA charts showed the reef to be seven miles from its actual position. The expensive ship had to be cut up into three pieces and destroyed.

Friends of the Niña base their continued hopes on the possibility that New Zealand SAR resources may have been searching the wrong area in what has been their biggest search ever. Two GPS positions from Niña's Iridium phone were 700 miles apart, even though the reports were sent within just seven minutes of each other. Clearly one or both of the positions was in error. Friends of the Niña crew believe the Kiwis may have focused their search on the wrong GPS coordinate, and have thus been looking close to 700 miles from where they should have focused their search.

Realistically, there is reason to doubt that the Niña crew may still be alive. Nothing has been heard from their VHF, SSB, Iridium or EPIRB in nearly two months. And no matter which of their last GPS positions was correct, they were in cold and often rough waters.

But based on history, there is a chance they are still alive. In 2006, three fishermen from San Blas, Mexico, drifted 5,000 miles in nine months before their 29-ft disabled panga was spotted by a fishing boat near the Marshall Islands. One of the crew had died. In 1942, Poon Lim, a Chinese seaman, was on a merchant ship torpedoed by the Nazis off South Africa. He survived for 133 days in remarkably good shape, having lost not much weight at all. In 1973, Brits Maurice and Marilyn Bailey had their sailboat holed by a whale while on their way from Panama to New Zealand. They survived in their liferaft for 117 days before being rescued in poor health by a Korean fishing vessel. And sailor Steve Callahan drifted almost all the way across the Atlantic in his liferaft after a whale holed his boat.

"Two GPS positions from Niña's Iridium phone were 700 miles apart, even though the reports were sent within just seven minutes of each other. "
Not necessarily a mystery. if the phone was taken out of a box after extended non-use and travel, the last sky sight position would still be in memory, and presumably transmitted with the first call. One or more minutes later, the GPS would have refreshed and updated the position, so presumably the second position would be more likely to be the real one.

But NGA considers themselves to be part of the intelligence community and deals with civilians only to the extent that they are forced to. There's also a big difference between monitoring satellite calls in real time, versus what may or may not have been logged two months ago. As to their competency and whether they put a ship on a reef...remember, this IS the military intelligence community. If someone says "oops, we make lousy maps" you need to remember that the Russian cartographers were the finest in the world under the Czars. Then the Soviets literally misdrew entire villages and rivers on their maps, to ensure invaders (Hi, JFK!) wouldn't be able to use those maps against them. Sure, our maps are no good. Or is that a convenient disinformation?

Either way, putting one's hopes in the NGA is probably worth less than consulting the Oracle of Delphi. Or asking the NSA to task satellite coverage in the area where a liferaft might be now.

Hull failure: As is the Edmund Fitzgerald wasn't the first or last ship to go down from that? This is a documented failure mode, after all.

Fornication with the ship's cat: Brings to mind that wreck vaguely in the UK about fiv eyears ago, where someone had bought a brand new pricey yacht and ran it aground on the maiden voyage, while offwatch with his, ah, beloved, leaving the yacht to find it's own way onto the rocks.

Now, tdw, is your reservation about the fact that it was the ship's CAT, as opposed to other livestock? Or that a carnal act outside of the sanctity of marriage might be involved?

"Senator, why did you beat your wife last night?"
I did not beat my wife, I have never struck my wife.
"Then who was that woman you were beating last night?"

HS ... apologies for missing your post and for delayed reply but given my own (lack of) matrimonial status the sanctity thereof is of little concern to me and well, if the cat was willing then who am I to deny anyone a bit of tabby.

My only concern was that we don't accuse anyone of rooting the ship's cat without evidence. Cats after all are sensitive creatures.

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